Re-igniting a brand is by no means an easy feat. Bitwala is now on a mission to bring its most loved and used features back – Simple self-custody, trading, and card issuing, at a time when European regulations are stricter than they have ever been.

The current state of crypto regulations in Europe is akin to E-Money legislation where regulators are taking consumer protection more seriously than ever and enforcing firms that deal with virtual assets to have a strict set of guidelines, protections, and internal policies to manage the risks associated with running a virtual asset business, which effectively makes the task of being a VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider, i.e. one who provides Virtual Asset Services..) nearly as challenging as running a traditional financial institution.

Dennis and Jan being veterans in the industry were intimately familiar with every existing ‘Banking as a Service’, ‘Crypto as a Service’, and other funny ‘aaS’ acronyms in the European landscape. As they mention in their blog, they were focused on doubling down on building a crypto neo-bank that people actually loved and wanted. To this end, Striga solved one of Bitwala’s pain points by providing compliant digital assets and banking infrastructure out of the box, without the need for Bitwala to handle any regulatory burden. Striga was the first company licensed under the new Estonian regime which cut down the number of VASPs in the country from several hundred to ~79 at the time of this writing, by raising the bar to run a compliant virtual asset business (A “mini-MiCA-like regime). This enabled Striga to build strong partnerships with issuing banks and financial institutions in a manner where a single set of APIs provides access to user onboarding, crypto custody, trading, IBAN issuing, and Visa card issuing, with a single contract and a fully free/transparent product + pricing.